Monday, September 22, 2008

They are Nothing but Thieves!

Secretary Henry Paulson has been making the rounds today defending his little $700 billion dollar car-jacking proposal to the Sunday talking heads. He is nothing more than a common thief. He’s push right now is that we have to do this “fast and clean” (before the American people can read past the MSM pep-rally for this and they find out what is really going on).

As I have addressed already on this site, Paulson wants this money without any Congressional oversight as to how it is spent and the money would be a renewing slush fund so that he would have $700 billion available at any given time to have on the books so it would probably cost us even more than that.

“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” Global Economic Analysis

“The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time.” Global Economic Analysis

But that’s yesterdays news, so to speak. Today it has been revealed that Paulson wants much more.

Apparently Secretary Paulson also wants to be able to bailout foreign banks with our money, “such as Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS.” Politico

“If a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution,” Sec. Paulson on This Week reported by Politico.

As if that wasn’t enough, Sec. Paulson also wants to delay any kind of meaningful regulatory revisions of the process that allowed this to happen in the first place and at the same time, he wants no restrictions on handing over massive bonuses to the CEO’s and CFO’s that created this mess in the first place.

“And the secretary told NBC’s Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press” that he doesn’t want new regulations simultaneously: “That’s not doable to do that immediately. But we very much need new regulations.” Politico.

“On “Fox News Sunday,” Paulson told Chris Wallace that he would resist the Democrats’ desired limits on executive compensation.” “If we design it so it’s punitive and institutions aren’t going to participate, this won’t work the way we need it to work,” Politico.

Politico’s article on this is outstanding, and I clearly recommend it. One thing that stands out, that Politico doesn’t really touch on, is Paulson’s continued assertion that the most important thing here is that “the system” survive.

“But we need this system to work. And so reforms need to come afterwards.” Sec. Paulson

“The key here is protecting the system. We have a global financial system…” Sec. Paulson reported from Politico.

All this marvellous “global system” has done is transfer the cumulative wealth of the people of many nations upward into the hands of a very few people. And it is clearly failing miserably. Income is down; standards of living are down; foreclosures are up; inflation is up; world wide hunger is up; entire populations are being displaced.

This system has failed in epic proportions, and Sec. Paulson is defending it as if it were democracy itself.

Why don’t these Bush/Cheney adminstration officials ever sweat and plead when some part of the Constitution is in jeopardy? Because they hate our democracy and they can’t wait till we have to hand over every dime we make to their banking or corporate buddies.

This is flat out, in your face, they don’t care who sees it, theft on a biblical scale. They are literally stealing every penny they can right before the election and BushCo is no more. An unashamed carjacking of the American economic system by ruthless thugs pretending to be businessmen.

200+ years ago, the reaction to something like this would have made the Boston Tea Party look like… well… a tea party. Something needs to be done.

As a side note, Barack Obama made clear his position today when he told a crowd in North Carolina:

“First, there must be no blank check when American taxpayers are on the hook for this much money, …Second, taxpayers shouldn’t be spending a dime to reward C.E.O.s on Wall Street while they’re going out the door.” New York Times

Now Obama’s position is once again clear. This is probably the opinion of a vast majority of Americans right now (probably everyone BUT those CEOs who will be looking to cash in) if not all of them. Let’s see if Sen. Obama sticks to his guns when we need him most, or if he, once again, has to “compromise” his convictions to the corporate and banking elites.

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